-
I want to thank all the members that have upgraded your accounts. I truly appreciate your support of the site monetarily. Supporting the site keeps this site up and running as a lot of work daily goes on behind the scenes. Click to Support Signs101 ...
Switching from Adobe Photoshop to Corel Photo Paint?
- Thread starter Andy D
- Start date
myront
Dammit, make it faster!!
We have both and because we primarily design in CorelDRAW it only makes sense to me to use PP for little things like remove the background, a little touch up here and there etc. That way I can stay in Corel, edit bitmap, and jump right back on the fly. Just as illustrator & photoshop. They both do the exact same thing. Have the exact same tools etc. Just might be a bit of a learning curve is all.
PhotoPaint can do all the basic stuff. What it doesn't have is the ready access to plugins and brushes and stuff because the user base is different. So if you have been using favorite Photoshop tools for making automatic chrome letters or other things like that, you may not find the same tools for PhotoPaint.
Notarealsignguy
Arial - it's almost helvetica
I think you will be let down unless its just for basic tasks. Its closer to paint than it is to photoshop IMO.
I have noticed that, Particleshop came free with Corel 2020 & it seems like a pretty cool, easy to use add-on, but it only came with a few basic brushes & I
couldn't find any free, user made brushes like Photoshop has.
myront
Dammit, make it faster!!
WildWestDesigns
Active Member
If I am not mistaken with X7 on up (I stopped using DRAW at x5, even though X6 came with my last version of embroidery software that I got), have the ability to create your own tools using VBA, C# and/or C++. While I have never messed with C#, C++ I have with Qt, so that's what I would probably mess with, but I digress. This actually gives one a little more of an edge as one can create what they need (if motivated to do so). I'm not sure about PhotoPaint (never really used it, although I hardly use Ps as well), but I think one is just limited to VBA (or has VBA been replaced with JS, I think MS is/was going that way with VBA?).
WYLDGFI
Merchant Member
Ive been using Photoshop and Illustrator for years....if you are accustomed to P-shop, stick with it. If its a cost thing and you want to learn & put in the time to work with Corel then you are bettering yourself for investing the time and effort. We use Mac's here exclusively....so Adobe has always been our go-to.
David Wright
New Member
The Affinity line from serif software is much better and gaining many adherents. Way cheaper, no subscription.
https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/photo/
https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/photo/
WildWestDesigns
Active Member
I have to wonder just how long that will last though. It wasn't too terribly long ago that Corel was hocking the fact that they still had a perpetual license option when Adobe went all in on CC and now there appears to be moves to do away with it. I see some waffling, but it definitely appears that they are wanting to get in on that more and more subscription only. I see that a lot with other things as well. Astute Graphics (which I loved for Adobe, but they have gone in on that (and I got an email today about a livecast on licensing changes for them as well, wonder what that'll be like). I wonder when Serif will jump on that bandwagon as well. They may not, I am speculating here, but I do have to wonder how long will that no subscription aspect still be a difference.
Dude! I downloaded the trial version & realy like it! Very intuitive and they have a direct link to a huge library of free images that you click and drag into the design.. & there seems to be tons of free
user created add-ons. Thanks for the heads up... I have about 20 days to cancel the Corel 2020 and get my money back.. I think I will download the affinity designer and see if I can be happy with that,
if so, I'm going to chunk Corel! I have always been a Corel fan boy, but now I'm sick of their cr@p.
Andy D said:
I bought Windows and iPad versions of Affinity Designer a couple or so months ago when they had their 50% off pandemic pricing special in effect. Affinity Designer has a fairly impressive set of features and capabilities for a lower-cost application.
The .afdesign files work pretty seamlessly between the iPad and desktop versions. It's easiest using a cloud storage folder like Dropbox. Just make sure any active fonts are installed on both devices (easier to do via OSX and iOS since they use many of the same system fonts).
One thing I don't like about Affinity Designer: it doesn't seem to be capable of exporting vector-based files containing true vector-based fills. Some formats will only contain raster based artwork while a couple will, at best, contain vector objects with raster-based fills clipped to them. I think that's a serious limitation for professional use. The files need to be portable in high quality to other applications, be it rivals like Adobe or for specialty apps like large format RIPs. It makes me wonder about the "under the hood" workings of Affinity Designer. It is really a true vector graphics application or a hybrid application featuring vector objects using pixel-based fill effects? I kind of wonder if it might be the latter since the maximum document sizes are affected by document resolution settings.
WildWestDesigns said:
I don't know how Serif can maintain the business model for its Affinity graphics products. I guess the idea is just pricing it low enough that the applications gain popularity and then move a lot of units. That approach might work for a few years, but probably not over a 10-20 year span or longer.
IMHO, Corel's shift to its new pricing model ($249 per year subscription or $499 one time purchase with optional $149 per year "upgrade protection" subscription) was done out of delusions of grandeur and outright greed coming from the private equity folks who own Corel. I don't think the pricing and licensing change was done out of necessity.
A few years ago CorelDRAW was on a 2 year product cycle between full versions. Back then it cost around $99 per year to keep a CorelDRAW license up to date. Their first mistake was trying to cosmetically match Adobe's yearly CC updates by moving to an annual full version cycle. The yearly CorelDRAW updates were lackluster compared to those that took 2 years to develop. But Corel wanted just as much money. So that yearly cost to stay current doubled from $99 to $199. Obviously many existing CorelDRAW customers chose to skip one or more product versions. So Corel answered that by doing away with traditional upgrades. Just to add more insult to injury they tacked another $50 to the subscription and upgrade protection prices this year.
Meanwhile it appears Corel's development team is stretched thin. I wonder if CorelDRAW is even the top priority for Corel and its new owners, KKR. There's a lot of email and web advertising put behind their low-cost consumer applications. The CDR 2019 release was a real disaster. Version 2020 has fixed only a few of the bugs while introducing some new ones. Some of my font families don't work correctly in CDR 2020, but do work in earlier versions.
I think Corel is potentially setting itself up for its own demise. The combination of software development quality control and pricing is just downright terrible right now. Does Corel even understand who all makes up the CorelDRAW user base? A big chunk of it is office productivity people doing non-pro DIY graphics tasks. Sign companies, PC-based print shops and screen printers use CorelDRAW on a more professional basis. And then there is an amateur-enthusiast market segment. There's not a lot of a magazine publishers or film-video types using Corel; that's very Mac-oriented territory with Adobe being the dominant player.
Affinity Designer, Inkscape, Vectornator, GIMP, Procreate and other free/low-cost alternatives are a very real threat at stealing CorelDRAW users in the office productivity and amateur-enthusiast categories. Adobe is actively working on consolidating its lead in the professional graphics space.
This week Adobe moved several beta versions of its applications into publicly available betas via the Creative Cloud panel. For instance Illustrator 24.2.3 (aka CC 2020) is the latest version. The beta of AI 24.3 is available for any CC subscriber to download and test drive. Very nice thing: it's a separate install that does not over-write AI 24.2.3. Overall, Adobe has been pushing out more updates. I've seen a lot more updates to Illustrator CC 2020 than I have for CorelDRAW 2020. The Illustrator development team has been listening to a lot of user requests and even introducing more sign design friendly features, like the large canvas option.
Last edited:
ColorCrest
All around shop helper.
You've mentioned Photoshop only, as opposed to Adobe CC. You can get the photographer's deal of PS and Lightroom for $10 per month with a one year commitment. The deal being what it is, Photo Paint in not even a consideration.
Photoshop has its own internal strengths -things I believe it does much better than other rival applications. I like the user interface far more. The keyboard short cuts for many operations are vastly superior. Take for instance the Ctrl-Alt-Spacebar arrangement. I can zoom in/out and hand pan across the document regardless of the active tool being used with combinations of those keys. I can use the pen tool to hand digitize vector paths using some of the same keys (plus shift) and be able to simultaneously adjust my view as I'm drawing and actively adjusting paths while still drawing them. PhotoPaint doesn't work like that (nor does CorelDRAW).
Photoshop on its own is one thing. But it's even more powerful via integration between Adobe Illustrator, InDesign, After Effects, Premiere Pro and others.
Photoshop on its own is one thing. But it's even more powerful via integration between Adobe Illustrator, InDesign, After Effects, Premiere Pro and others.
WildWestDesigns
Active Member
One word of caution with this package. There was a deal that Adobe was playing around with changing the pricing schema and some people were seeing $19.99 for the price. They got a lot of flack for that and I think that they have come back from that, but I wouldn't be surprised if they were to try something else. Always keep your options open and try not to be depending on any one program, always be willing to bounce if need be. The more "nimble" one is, the better overall.
This is one thing that I don't like about subscription in the long run when the user isn't able to get more then just a yearly lock in.
I don't know. One big downside to both Adobe and Corel, is a lot of cruft that's in there. Roughly 30 or so yrs. And unless they are willing to pull things out of the code base, it makes it hard for efficiency and able to add X without breaking Y. By going subscription (especially if the vendor lockin is high), that helps out and allows them more wiggle room for upgrades to the software (which is going to be hard and hard to do with that long in the tooth codebase, without some re-write).
And with them having now a Mac version and Mac going to ARM (Silicon), I have to wonder how that's going to turn out. I have to wonder if Corel has any Mac centric devs on the team. Especially if everything is platform specific for each version. For instance, I use Qt for my c++ programs, that allows me to build for just about all of the platforms (including web with the wonderful world of WASM), but if everything is targeting specific APIs, especially for the GUI alone makes it a headache unless one has a very big team. Now adding another arch to the mix? I just dunno. That's just GUI alone mind you, Darwin has a few gotchas as well outside of that.
This is probably one of the biggest concerns with so few people being able to look at the codebase.
I'm actually seeing some of that being chipped away in the video/film space though. Particularly small/mid-range firms.
I've been seeing a lot of complaints with Premier lately (and I'm a huge fan of Pr, but I've actually been using Blender for my video needs lately and it has it's issues, but it's been getting a lotta lovin' lately, plus it has a very extensible Python API).
What I do see Adobe doing a lot of (and it's a valid course of action, but hardly innovative) is buying other companies out and expanding that way. While I'm glad that they still kept Substance Painter on Linux (using the very portable and distro agnostic AppImage format (what I use on my apps, great format)), but they made it subscription, but I digress again.
I'm glad to see this. Especially since that one feature has been on a lot of people's wish list for a looooonnnnngggggg time.
As an aside, I got an email from Astute today about a Q&A livestream and one of the topics that they are going to talk about is licensing changes. I wonder what they are going to be doing there? I love those plugins (I think you are a fan of them as well), I have a set for CS6, really does add value to it, just wasn't a fan of them going subscription (I know, I know, huge shocker). That line of being able to keep your license and not continue being a subscriber doesn't really mean much with the forced rolling release nature of the CC suite, by definition would have to keep up with your subscription for the plugins.
WildWestDesigns said:
I'm 99% certain the changes to CorelDRAW from a 2 year product cycle to annual and then later on to effectively a subscription-only arrangement was done as a cash grab.
I think Corel has long seen itself as an equal to Adobe, despite what Adobe has done (and acquired) over the past 20 years. Corel watched Adobe launch Creative Cloud and ditch Creative Suite with its traditional retail/licensing model in the process. Despite the verbal blow-back from many users (some of whom were using illegal/cracked versions) Adobe's revenue and stock price soared over the following years. Corel thought they could repeat that success. Corel's bean counter owners just haven't woke up to the fact that Corel is not Adobe.
I'm skeptical Corel will be able to continue developing the Mac version of CorelDRAW even if they want to do so. Apple's pending shift from Intel to ARM adds another serious obstacle to a few existing ones already hurting the chances of CorelDRAW on the Mac platform. Corel tried this time to make its Mac version a true OSX application (unlike CDR 11), but the CDR 2019 release was still sub-par and CDR 2020 wasn't much of an improvement. The bigger question is who does Corel expect to buy this? I don't expect them to win over any Adode users on OSX, especially with the current pricing/licensing scheme.
Most of the people who bought the OSX version of CorelDRAW were existing customers who were running CorelDRAW under Windows on Mac hardware. Many complained the Win-on-Mac version ran better than the native OSX version. Additionally some of the keyboard shortcuts and other functions in the native OSX version were changed compared to the Windows counterpart. Now those Mac-based CorelDRAW users will face a very tricky situation. The practice of running Windows on Mac hardware will end once Apple's transition to ARM is complete. If Corel pulls the plug on the Mac version of CorelDRAW what will those Mac users do? Buy new Windows PCs or stay on OSX but switch to different vector graphics software?
Marketing wise, Corel is in a catch-22 situation with the Mac version of CorelDRAW. It would be easier for Corel to discontinue the Mac version and work harder on the Windows version. But the company will end up looking bad for launching and discontinuing a Mac version of CorelDRAW twice. Meanwhile many of Corel's competitors, even low-cost upstarts like Affinity Designer have stable versions running on Windows, OSX and iPad OS.
Adobe has its own challenges, but I think they're responding to them better than Corel. Adobe does need to do more work on Premiere to improve its performance. But then again there is only so much they can do. It's very resource hungry software. And I believe some people are buying certain kinds of computers, notebooks in particular without knowing full well what that notebook can do. A fully pimped out 16 inch MacBook Pro will get great battery life and a balance of decent performance. But gaming style notebooks costing half the price will blow it into weeds doing many rendering and video compiling chores.
Blackmagic Design makes some very good quality cameras and video editing hardware. I think they're using their low-priced software as a loss leader to market their cameras and other hardware. DaVinci Resolve does pose a credible challenge to Premiere, but so does Final Cut. The big thing that has allowed Premiere to do well is its dynamic link integration with After Effects, Audition and other Adobe graphics applications. Changes can be made to various elements without having to do a bunch of importing and re-rendering.
WildWestDesigns said:
I don't really know. If I had to guess maybe Astute Graphics will offer a couple or so different plug-in package deals. Right now you get every plug-in they make with their annual subscription plan. But some people are going to use certain plug-ins far more than others.
Last edited:
WildWestDesigns
Active Member
Well, if you think about it, it's not all hubris on Corel's part. The customers have played into that thought process as well.
For instance, look at the labels that people put on software: hobby, enthusiast, pro. Typically that's also coupled with price and development model.
There is this ingrained belief of "You get what you paid for". Which the natural conclusion would be, the more you pay, the more you get (which isn't always the case).
When one asks what software that they consider for Pro use (if they are going after the pro market), it's typically Corel and Ai that's mentioned. And they follow this label structure: On the Expensive Side (one may be cheaper then the other (or was))->Commercially Developed->Pro Use, but overall not what anyone considers budget category.
And usually those 3 labels are tied tightly together. For instance, if one was to change the price level, that would change the use level and then if the development type was different that would also change the use type. That's the assumption of the the "normies" and there are far more of them even in professional settings. I firmly disagree with sentiment as always being 100% true, it does need to always be evaluated on an individual bases, but if one thinks that is always true, then people are going to be instantly swayed naturally one way and that favors 2 companies, Corel and Adobe. Now, they may be assuming an equal piece of the pie and that does play into their hubris. But you know Apple doesn't have a huge overall piece of the pie compared to Windows and they pretty much do the same thing and I would say very much anti consumer (of course, it never sat right with me the all "Customer doesn't know what you want until you tell them" mentality).